I've never played the DS version of this before, and it's been like over 10 years since I played the original Kirby's Super Star, so this is like, practically a blind playthrough. I only remember the basics.
What I do remember is that this game is not really "6 games in one". In fact, it's pretty much the size of a normal Kirby game, with each "game" in the menu screen being about the size of a single world. Like in most Kirby games, the first world is always the shortest and pathetically easy, and then the worlds get progressively longer.
Spring Breeze is the first world, it's only 4 stages long. These stages are extremely simple, much like Dream Land 1. There weren't even any secrets to find, except for the one time I went into the moon and got to a bonus room where you collect a bunch of food and 1ups while falling, then land in an optional miniboss. Also there might've been some extra stuff beyond the door that lead to the Dedede fight, I dunno, that last stage was weird how it basically let you start the final boss right away.
This is the first game where every Kirby power has a Smash Bros like moveset. This is expanded further in the newer Kirby games.
Beating Spring Breeze unlocks the next 3 worlds; Dyna Blade, Gourmet Race, and The Great Cave Offensive.
Dyna Blade is basically like world 2. Gourmet Race should really be counted as another bonus minigame (there's 3 others unlocked from the start, labeled as "Sub games". So the Great Cave Offensive would be world 3, Revenge of Meta Knight is world 4, and then finally Milky Way Wishes is I think might be long enough to be considered both worlds 5 and 6. And then there's some other modes added in the DS version that I've never played before.
I guess I'll do the first of the 3 Sub Games next.
This card minigame is quite hard... You play against 3 cpus, and it shows a bunch of face up cards on the touch screen, then when a card shows up on the top screen, the first one to touch the matching card on the touch screen wins... but it gets easier as you go into more rounds, as the number of cards to choose from goes down... er, actually maybe it's just random. The 3rd level is insanely hard, the only way to win is by just keeping the bottom screen in focus, and hope that the one that comes up in the top screen is instantly recognizable and your stylus is already near it.
I won all 3 levels after about like 15 minutes... damn that apparently doesn't count towards completion. The file is currently 9% completed.
Next I'll do world 2: Dyna Blade. Looks like this is 5 stages long.
I like these CG cutscenes that were added in.. kinda showing the transition period between the 2D Kirby art style and Return to Dreamland.
This is where a lot more stage elements are introduced that weren't in Spring Breeze... like ladders, bomb blocks, puzzles with missable rewards... all things that are useful to learn about before starting Great Cave. And also the stages have become a lot longer and more complex. Like already in the first stage it's not always clear which way is progress and which way is optional rewards... sometimes I think both ways lead to progress.
I don't really like having a CPU partner, especially because it makes it more tedious to swap out your powers, and sometimes they might accidentally ruin a puzzle and lock you out of a path.
Yeah wow, these Dyna Blade stages are very different from the Spring Breeze ones. Spring Breeze was more like Kirby's Dream Land, whereas this is more like Kirby's Adventure. A couple of the stages have a switch that opens up a new stage on the map screen, but these secret stages are just powerup rooms where you can choose whatever powerup you want and try it out on some weak enemies. I'm pretty sure there's only 2 of these switches cuz there's not enough room on the map screen for more stuff.
Dyna Blade was easy with the hammer... It ends in "To Be Continued" after a CG cutscene where Kirby helps Dyna Blade's children get fed and learn to fly.
File is now at 22% completion.
The target shooting sub game "Kirby on the Draw" is fun... certain enemy targets are worth more, the bombs are -50... you gotta reload evey 10 shots, and it's likely you'll miss a lot due to other players shooting it before you. I can't even beat level 2... level 3 must be nearly impossible.
Next is world 3, The Great Cave Offensive.
I forgot how useful this treasure screen is... you can see all the treasures in order based on where they are in each section. And the bottom screen when you're playing shows the cave's layout in a stage select map screen format... I see... so there are 4 main "level" sections, with a smaller transition section between each of them... I guess these 4 stages are a lot longer than the 5 Dyna Blade stages, so it still sticks with the rule of each world being longer than the last.
I got all the treasures in "Sub-Tree" before moving onto the first mine cart transition area... the whale boss at the end of that level is easy with the sword. got to choose between 3 powers before the boss... and this mine cart area lets you go back to full health.
The Crystal area... immediately it branches off into 3 doors. The 3rd door eventually railroads you towards the boss, while the other 2 loop back around. I missed a couple treasures, on in the 1st (left) door and one in the 3rd door.
Now at 27/60 after beating Crystal.
Mine cart transition room to the 3rd area, Old Tower.
The first room is outside the tower, you just fall down a long way, and there are doors at various levels of the tower you can go in during the fall.
Woah, I like these background designs inside the tower. I don't remember if the SNES version looked this good too or not.
Damn, after getting the hammer I decided to try and go back to Crystal and try and get those 2 chests I'm missing, but getting backwards through Crystal and keeping your power is very hard, due to the copy enemies that can easily take the power from you and run away.
But actually, going back to Sub-Tree to get a sword doesn't take that long at all, when you know where you're going, backtracking through the stages is very quick.
Each of the 4 "areas" are like a really long stage each with about 15 collectibles to find along the way.
Those 2 chests I missed in the Crystal area were both really easy to find, just a matter of coming back through the 1st door with the sword ability.
Oh wow... so apparently you can skip the Old Tower entirely and go straight to the final minecart room transitioning to the 4th area... but of course the whole point of this mode is to find the collectibles so I will be exploring the tower.
The level design in this tower area is amazing... I really like these kind of self contained 2D door mazes.
At the bottom floor, there's something I need the hammer or stone for, and you can go up through the floors.
In the top door of the tower, there's 2 main paths...
1 path leading to a hammer boss and looping around back to the bottom floor of the tower, where you can exit out the bottom door of the tower.
1 path leading to an area with stone enemies, and then a bunch of doors leading to dead end rooms with treasure.
I think this is supposed to be the other side of the tower in 3D? on the outside? It's hard to tell what they were intending with the location scenery sometimes due to the SNES limitations...
These dead end rooms have some really cool linear obstacle sections... like running/jumping along with the wind while avoiding sleep power pickups... and then it leads to a dead end starry room with trampolines to carry you up through the wind... (wind is a neat way of adding challenge by hindering Kirby's usually unrestricted movement.
Actually, one of those paths continues... now I'm kinda confused actually... At this chameleon boss I actually died for the first time in this game. I only had the stone power going into this boss battle, and I couldn't figure out how to get some projectiles for vanilla kirby to damage him. I guess this is the 3rd area's boss, even though it doesn't seem required to get to the next area.
That boss is easy if you use Ninja power (one of the 3 you get to pick up before the boss). Also it respawns you in the room you died... At first I thought it would respawn you at a save point... but I guess the save points are where you respawn if you run out of lives... It would've been quite a bit harder than the usual Kirby difficulty if it were the former, since the save points are kinda spread out, like pretty much only at the beginning of each area.
Wow, this tower area is actually way more complex than I thought... it's now at the point where I actually NEED to keep a CPU helper with me sometimes because I literally might need to bring 2 powers into another room at the same time.
I looked everywhere... but now I'm too high and confused to find the last 3 chests I'm missing... I guess I'll go and at least experience the 4th and final part of this area before skipping on to Meta Knight's Revenge.
The 4th area is Garden
The start of this area has the feel of a world hub from Kirby's Dream Land 2, where there's like 4 doors and where each door leads to its own self contained stage before bringing you back to this hub room.
The first door goes to another similar "hub room area" with several branching path doors, although only one of the doors leads you back to the main Garden hub.
The middle door I went in ultimately lead to the 4th boss (a floating head/hands boss, easy with bomb), and a warp star leading to the end of the cave... beat it with 51/60 treasures, 7,222,040 G... The Triforce was the last treasure I found before beating it.
Snack Trax is a really cool minigame too... actually wasn't there a 3DS game announced at E3 that was kinda like this? I gotta try that out.
Level 1 is easy enough that as long as you never eat any bombs or more than 1 or 2 worms, you'll probably win. Level 2 gets ridiculous, and adds rocks which take two taps to destroy.
File is now 41% complete.
Gourmet Race is a very short mode. It's just 3 stages where you race against Dedede and you have to both get to the end before him and eat more food than him. After trying Gourmet Race once and getting 2/3 wins and a score of 173, and time around 2:20 or something... That unlocked world 4: Revenge of Meta Knight. My file is now at 46%.
I'm really liking the backgrounds in this a lot more than I expected... especially in Great Cave Offensive after the 1st area. Let's see if these last 2 worlds exceeds that.
This mode feels like a Megaman X game in its story telling... and it's made up of short linear segments with a strict time limit on each... there's even a robot boss battle that I think you're meant to lose.
Kirby chases after the Halberd, but keeps getting knocked off and has to go through some ground stages before infiltrating it. The level design of this mode is more Dream Land style, linear stages that don't have much exploration at all. The bosses are really unique though... double Wispy Woods with some really cool attacks... and double of some minibosses...
I definitely had to start using partners during the latter half of Great Cave, but this mode I feel is best when you go the whole thing alone and never change powers... although I do end up having to switch weapons later on. Bird has been very useful in most of the ground areas, but the later ground areas you need the specific ability that it's giving you before each section.
Then on the Halberd, it's better to stick to more offensive weapons... at first I went with fireball, then switched to beam and took out the robot boss easily with charged beams... Then switched to bomb for superior vertical range.
The Halberd seems to be divided into a bunch of mini stages with a warp star between each one. It starts to get pretty hard by then. The reactor boss requires you to lure the laser in a certain direction to hit the core a few times... I died once and then on the 2nd try barely beat it before the time ran out.
Now it's letting me choose from like 5 different powers. I guess I'll go with Yoyo.
After fighting all of Meta Knight's henchmen, then there's a sword fight against Meta Knight, and he now has all his Smash Bros attacks.
While the end of Great Cave had the treasures you found in the ending scroll, this mode ends with a scroll of all the enemies you fought, and shows how Kirby looks with their power.
My file is now at 64%.
World 5, Milky Way Wishes
The atmosphere of those Meta Knight Revenge stages were even more amazing than the latter half of the Great Cave, but even that was nothing compared to how amazing and full of magic that CG cutscene at the beginning of Milky Way was.
Holy crap, this mode is way different. I don't remember this very well at all. Instead of getting abilities temporarily from enemies and pickups, you get "Copy Essence Deluxe" pickups that permanently add an ability to your inventory and you can switch to it any time like in a Zelda game. The stage select map is like Star Fox 2, and I guess you need to go around to all the stages (in any order) and collect all the abilities and then you'll be able to do the final stage and stop the sun and moon from fighting.
Oh wow... and the level design gets even better too... this one stage, Grass Planet Floria, has doors that take you to different seasons of the same stage layout. it ends with the Double Wispy fight again, only it's autumn this time.
Water Planet Aquarius
omg wtf dude... this stage has the best background scenery yet.
After the boss, when you get the sword power, there's a stained glass depiction of the sun and moon...
Also I guess I need to come back here after I get fire.
lmao what's with this water current maze at the end... jeez
Another boss refight. I guess all the levels in this mode end with boss refights.
Flame Planet Hotbeat
hmm... I didn't end up getting anything here... I dunno I feel like there's something in that crazy mine cart section with all the switches that the minecarts activate which change around the lava/wall structure, but I can't figure it out...
Wind Planet Skyhigh
Very fun, straighforward level... a boss refight at the end. Got all the abilities here easily.
Cave Planet Cavius
That was easy... a simple cave maze filled with minibosses... and a boss refight at the end. Got all the abilities here easily.
Machine Planet Mekkius
Another big miniboss maze after the main switch puzzle section.. I got 2/3 of the abilities here.
Eternal Planet Half Moon
A very straightforward level with only 2 ability essences to find. The first section is a minecard maze with a really pretty starry path.
The boss at the end of this was actually different though... it's another RPG boss like in Meta Knight's Revenge, except there's a big knight and a bigger dragon to fight against.
Final stage: Galactic Nova
Going into this last level with 13/19 abilities found. I'm definitely gonna need to revisit this mode (as well as Great Cave Offensive) later on to 100% complete it, but for now I'll finish the game.
Marx was behind everything all along. He made the sun & moon fight, and then got Kirby to go out into space to find the wish making nova machine and he used it to wish to take over Pop Star... Kirby went onto a warp star and chased it down and destroyed the Nova in a sidescrolling shooter stage (with really neat 2.5d effects), and then defeated Marx. That was really easy.
But... that's not the end of Kirby Super Star Ultra.
Now I've unlocked 2 new modes: "Revenge of the King" and "The Arena".
and then after that there's "Meta Knightmare Ultra" and "Helper to Hero".
Leaving it here for now, with my file at 86% completion, and 7 stars out of however many stars there are.
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